Verma confirmation hearing

VERMA CONFIRMATION HEARING: CMS administrator nominee Seema Verma had her turn in the spotlight, with the Senate Finance Committee playing the role of seasoned theater critics. Verma was not terribly specific, but here’s what we found interesting from her star turn:

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— Meaningful use: Verma offered some tempered criticism of the meaningful use program, saying it held “enormous promise” but had endured a “rocky start.” The culprit? A lack of interoperability: “[I]f we’re going to have electronic health records, then we should make sure that it fulfills its promise, so that if someone goes to the emergency room … the doctors can pull up the information.”

In response to a question on onerous regulations — that included meaningful use — Verma pledged contact with the provider community, so that she could “understand the issues that are getting in the way of them being able to provide high quality care to the patients that they serve.”

— Virtual groups: One of the much-touted improvements from the Quality Payments Program is virtual groups: a way for small and independent practices to pool their resources in reporting quality metrics. When asked about virtual groups, Verma gave a vague answer: “Rural providers and frontier providers are in very unique situations. And when we’re thinking about policies, we need to engage with them on the front end to understand what their concerns are before policies are rolled out to make sure we are understanding the impact on them. Things that work well in an urban community don’t necessarily work well.”

Observers weren’t necessarily cheered. Aledade’s Travis Broome asked on Twitter how Verma could promise to listen to the community about a policy that didn’t exist. “The incoming CMS Secretary must recognize the importance of virtual groups in allowing small group providers to remain independent and the role that health IT vendors can play to successfully implement and manage the virtual group model,” said Athenahealth’s Greg Carey.

HEALTH IT GROUPS CHECK PRICE: While Verma’s making her way through the confirmation process, newly-minted HHS Secretary Tom Price is hearing it from health IT groups. As our own David Pittman points out, only 52 of as many as 1,200 EHR products are certified for 2015 standards to date — which would presumably put a crimp on many providers’ meaningful use attestations.

“We don’t understand how CMS and ONC expect providers to be ready if the products are not,” said Mari Savickis, CHIME’s vice president of federal affairs.

The delay is leading groups like CHIME and MGMA to ask for delays and clarification about Price’s regulatory intentions. Pros can get the rest here.

— AAFP: Also hoping for some regulatory changes are the American Academy of Family Physicians. Their asks center on interoperability and more modern usability.

PROGRAMMING NOTE — Due to the President's Day recess,Morning eHealth will not publish on Monday Feb. 20. Our next Morning eHealth will publish on Tuesday Feb. 21.

Q&A — NIALL BRENNAN: Our own Arthur Allen got a sit-down with Niall Brennan, the erstwhile data dude at CMS. On his transparency efforts, like the hospital charge data release, Brennan says “I haven’t seen anything yet that fills me with dread” with respect to the Trump administration.

On the other hand, he concedes it’s hard to prognosticate about the new guys: “Three weeks ago it was inconceivable that green card holders would be denied entry to the United States, and I say that as a former green card holder.”

But he thinks data transparency and value-based care are bipartisan deals; then-Rep. Tom Price, for example, voted for MACRA. So the dataheads may be safe in Trumpworld.

Brennan also has some comments on meaningful use, fancy apps, and all the rest. Pros can get the rest here.

LIFELINE COMING?: The FCC’s Lifeline program — which subsidizes cellphone use for the poor — has been eyed by Medicaid health plans as a way to get useful devices in the hands of their customers. The hope, as David wrote in late December, is that these basic cellphones can be used to help patients with their health: texting to remind users about medications or appointments, for example.

But the program’s in trouble because of the incoming administration. As our Tech colleague Margaret Harding McGill reports, the FCC’s new leadership received a federal appeals court’s blessing to pause a case related to its program. The most recent iteration of the Lifeline rule cut states out of the subsidy-granting loop, which peeved the states, who liked having the authority to disburse money.

Meanwhile, Congress is getting more involved: Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) and Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) introduced the Preserving State Commission Oversight Act of 2017, which would ensure the role of state regulatory utility commissions — the entities at play in the court case.

HATCH’S TECH AGENDA: Sen. Orrin Hatch, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, released his tech agenda Thursday. The plan is in bullet point form, but includes a few items of interest for eHealth: promoting the “internet of things,” broadband investment and access to mobile spectrum; and ensuring cross-border data flows.

LARGE EMPLOYERS LIKE KANSAS TELEMEDICINE BILL: A new telemedicine bill in Kansas “strikes the right balance” between flexibility while requiring a high standard of care, the ERISA Industry Committee, a group of large self-insured employers, says in a new letter. Clinicians can see first-time patients via telemedicine if the virtual exam is at least equivalent to an in-person encounter, the bill states. ERIC also liked the “technology-neutral definition of telehealth” the bill offers.

PATIENTS AND MEDICAL RECORDS DON’T ALWAYS AGREE: Prostate cancer edition. A group of researchers examined 881 patients’ medical records, asked them questions about their own health status, and found somewhat discordant results. For 16 of 20 conditions studied, self-reports and medical records agreed 90 percent of the time … which, in your correspondent’s estimation, means there’s still a fair bit of disagreement.

YOUR LATEST IN THERANOS: They’ve still got $200 million in the bank, CNBC notes! But pending lawsuits are seeking $240 million in damages, the WSJ adds.

Is medical professionalism more important than health IT in coordinating care?

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About The Author

Darius Tahir is an eHealth reporter for POLITICO Pro. Before joining POLITICO, Darius worked for Modern Healthcare (where he covered health care technology) and the Gray Sheet (where he covered medical devices and digital health).

Darius graduated from Stanford in 2009 — meaning he absorbed just enough sunshine and tech optimism to develop a fascination.